WELLFLEET, Mass. — The mother of a woman who died in a car crash on Cape Cod over the holiday weekend says her daughter had graduated from Yale University just days before and was on her way to the family vacation home in Wellfleet.

Police say 22-year-old Marina Keegan of Wayland was pronounced dead at the scene of Saturday afternoon’s crash on Route 6 in Dennis.

Keegan was a passenger in a car driven by 22-year-old Michael Gocksch of Centerport, N.Y. He was treated and released from a hospital.

Police say both were wearing seat belts and speed was not a factor.

Her mother tells the Cape Cod Times Keegan was “an astounding, amazing person” who had won national accolades for her writing and had accepted a job at The New Yorker.

Keegan had written a musical, “Independents”, which will play at the New York International Fringe Festival in August, according to the Times. She hoped to refine the script during the vacation to Wellfleet.

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Keegan also suffered from celiac disease, a small-intestine disorder associated with intolerance for gluten, the newspaper said. During her summers in Wellfleet, she founded a sand-castle building contest to raise money for a support group in Boston each August.

About 20 teams competed each year, raising about $500 each year, her father said.

Keegan’s essay for the Yale Daily News, which she wrote last year, earned her an NPR interview and national fame. Titled “Even Artichokes Have Doubts,” it’s about the career choices of college graduates and received 15,000 hits when first published.

Read the essay by clicking here.

Keegan also had an essay, which has gone viral, about all the possibilities and potential and emotions facing 2012 graduates. Titled “The Opposite of Loneliness,” it was read at Yale’s commencement exercises, just a few days before her death.

Read that essay by clicking here.


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